Contents

Overview

Traditionally, researchers use their real, full name when giving talks, presenting posters or publishing papers. Thus, there is a strong precedent for "signing your work" in biology and biological engineering. OpenWetWare can be considered another venue for making research information available. Although OpenWetWare tends to provide a place for in progress work like protocols and status of research projects, it is still a medium for communication of research. Hence, to align OpenWetWare more closely with the norms of the research community, we are considering a proposal to encourage OpenWetWare users to use their real, full name (under which they publish) as their OpenWetWare username. This new policy may also help to ensure the uniqueness of all OWW accounts and email addresses and provide consistency in the username format. Under this implementation, login will be via your email address.

Implementation

Currently, we are piloting the renaming of OpenWetWare user accounts on a trial basis. Details on volunteering for this trial are below. All new account requests are automatically given a username reflecting their full publication name.

We'd welcome your thoughts and comments on this proposal since this proposal is still under debate. Please check out the discussion on the talk page.

In particular, comments on whether this username policy should

not be implemented all

be on a volunteer basis

be mandatory for new users

be mandatory for all users

are especially needed.

Mechanism

Special:Renameuser: moves existing users, reassigns all edits and also moves all user pages to the new name

you need to have bureaucrat permissions to do this

to change your username, please add your current username and desired new username to the list below.

Renaming users

Users can now be easily renamed. If you do not have access to any subwikis, add yourself to the list below and a bureaucrat can rename you using Special:Renameuser (for OWW only). To rename your username across all subwikis simultaneously, email Austin.

Note, if you are on wikilists, they should still work properly. However, it is probably a good idea anyway to update them to point at your new user page rather than a redirect page. You can use something like the following url to find the lists you are on http://openwetware.org/index.php?title=Special:Parse&wikitext=%7B%7B%23dpl%3Anamespace%3DList%7Clinksto%3DUser%3A<USERNAME>%7D%7D (replace <USERNAME> with your old username)

Users to be renamed

Add your name here

Hossein Azari Soufiani -> Hossein Soufiani

Already Renamed

Jennyn -> Jenny T Nguyen (are we going for the period after middle initial? yes!)